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NEW DELHI - India 's foreign ministry has again defended a controversial citizenship register in northeast Assam after criticism from the United Nations, saying the almost two million people excluded from the list would not become "stateless".

The National Register of Citizens (NRC) was drawn up by India 's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) -- which also runs Assam state -- saying it was necessary to detect "foreign infiltrators".

Critics say it is being used by the BJP to push a Hindu nationalist agenda and marginalise the state's large minority of Muslims -- many who fled there when East Pakistan broke violently from Islamabad in 1971 to become Bangladesh.

Filippo Grandi, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, had on Sunday called on New Delhi to avoid stripping people of their nationality, saying it "would be an enormous blow to global efforts to eradicate statelessness".

But foreign ministry spokesman Raveesh Kumar defended the process, saying the NRC "does not make the excluded person 'stateless'" and any decisions taken would be consistent with Indian laws and its "democratic traditions".

"It (the NRC) also does not make him or her a 'foreigner', within the legal meaning of the term," Kumar said in a statement released late Sunday.